Newsbrief: A new report from analyst group Cowen and Company suggests that Activision's open-world action game Prototype 2, due for release next week, will "struggle" to reach 500,000 units sold in the U.S. in its first year.

Analyst Doug Creutz has reduced his previous estimate for Activision Blizzard's fiscal 2012 EPS from $1.05 to $1.01, stating that Prototype 2 is likely to see a "soft performance" when it launches, and will not sell as well as the original game.

He notes that neither the Xbox 360 or PS3 version of the game have broken into Amazon's top 100 selling games charts, which he says is "typically a bad sign for actual sales."

"We had been modeling the title to slightly exceed the 900,000 U.S. units the original title sold through during the year after its June 2009 launch," he explained. "We now believe Prototype 2 could struggle to reach 500,000 first-year U.S. units."